1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image-formation control device, an image-formation control method, and a computer program product.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a method for facilitating sorting of a roll of printed matter formed of a large volume of printed continuous recording paper is known, in which by printing markers across perforated lines of the continuous recording paper, breaks between jobs are identified with the printed matter being folded without the necessity of checking the contents of the printed matter.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H10-44552 discloses a method of generating markers that extend across boundary of an image forming area corresponding to a size of continuous recording paper, and synthesizing and printing the generated markers and print image data together.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H1-125265 discloses a method of receiving signals indicating positions of mountain-folded perforated lines of continuous recording paper, identifying the positions of the mountain-folded perforated lines based on the signals, and printing a pattern of rectangular markers across the mountain-folded perforated lines. Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H2-55174 discloses a method of printing markers on tear-off sprocket-hole sections to reduce wasted paper.
However, the above-described conventional methods have the following problems. In the method disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H10-44552, when the continuous recording paper is pre-printed paper, on which a company name, a logo, or an advertisement is printed beforehand (pre-printed), if, in order to fit the printed contents by a printer to the pre-printed contents on the continuous recording paper, printed image data are shifted by an operator in a main-scanning direction and a sub-scanning direction, a print position of a marker is displaced together with the printed image data, and thus the marker may not be able to be printed across a perforated line.
The method disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H1-125265 has a problem of having to provide a mechanism dedicated to recognition of the positions of the perforated lines. Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H2-55174 discloses an example of printing markers of a single type on the tear-off sprocket-hole sections over several pages from a job start page to make the breaks between jobs identifiable, but because the markers are of the single type, if, for example, jobs each consisting of one page are printed continuously, the markers are printed continuously before and after each one-page job, and thus there is a problem of not being able to recognize the breaks between the one-page jobs.